October 2, 2007
New IPCR director takes psychological approach to peace building
International Peace and Conflict Resolution program director Ronald Fisher is right at home in the center of international ethnic conflicts. He should be. It’s where he grew up. The son of a French Catholic and an English Protestant in Vancouver, Canada, Fisher saw firsthand how the ethnic differences that often divide people can also unite them.
“In Canada, as compared to the United States, the survival of the existing political system depends on the coexistence of two opposed ethnopolitical groups,” he explains. “It works, but there’s always the potential for violent conflict.”
Though he never saw those conflicts at home, Fisher’s unique lineage called his attention to the way differences between identity groups foster conflict. “I’d notice ethnic insults at school, and I’d think, ‘Hmm, what’s this?’” he recalls. “I picked up the indications of discrimination early on, and I could see that they were really signs of poor relations between people.”
Years later, as he was working toward his PhD in social psychology that idea came back to him on a larger scale. “I was studying a phenomenon called ‘ethnocentrism,’ which is really generalized prejudice, and I came to the realization that ethnocentrism and nationalism were often important sources of conflict,” he explains. “I realized this was how intergroup conflicts could escalate to violence, culminating even in genocide, which is really the ultimate form of racism.”
From that realization, Fisher’s unique approach to peace building was born. While many peace practitioners approach the task of defusing violence from a legal or political perspective, Fisher tackles the problem from a social and psychological perspective. On the surface, war or civil unrest often appears to be focused on a dispute over a piece of land or some other resource, but as Fisher sees it, there’s an often overlooked second dimension.
“Conflict is just about always a mix of real interest with social psychological issues that exacerbate the conflict and help escalate it,” he explains. “So there may be a real contest between two parties, but how it’s managed by the two parties determines whether the conflict becomes violent or reaches a peaceful conclusion.”
This was the case in the early 1990s in Cyrpus, where Fisher traveled at the behest of the Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security to help broker peace between Turkish and Greek Cypriots there. At first glance, the problem appeared to go no deeper than the question of who had been granted more authority by the 1960 power-sharing agreement between the two ethnic groups who share the Mediterranean island. But Fisher focused on something else—the prejudices and perceptions that fostered mistrust and anger between the groups and made a peaceful solution to that power-sharing problem impossible. By training prominent educators and leaders from each side of the conflict on how they could help change their group’s attitude toward the other group, Fisher helped foster discussions among people formerly unwilling to meet face-to-face.
“We saw quite a bit of progress in a sense of a more cooperative approach from the Turkish Cypriot community,” says Fisher, who continues to work with leaders in Cyrpus and last visited the region in the spring. “There has also been a significant change of leadership on the Greek side, and it’s taken them back to more of a hard-line negotiating stance . . . But they’re still talking, so we’re hopeful that could lead to a lasting peace.”
Fisher with Professor Abdul Aziz Said, former director of IPCR (Photos by Jeff Watts)
Since 2001 Fisher has brought this approach to peace building into AU classrooms as a professor in the School of International Service (SIS). This fall he was named the director of the school’s International Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR) program, formerly led by Professor Abdul Aziz Said.
“Ron Fisher is a wonderful colleague, a model scholar, a clear thinker, and a leader who will inspire,” said SIS dean Louis Goodman following a reception celebrating Fisher’s appointment last Wednesday. “I am certain that Ron will build upon the remarkable accomplishments of the first 11 years of the IPCR program under Abdul Aziz Said’s founding leadership, and move the program to even better serve students, faculty, and the wider AU community.”
As he continues to help peace practitioners throughout the world see the social psychological roots of conflict through organizations like the United States Institute of Peace, Fisher also plans to strengthen the IPCR program in its second decade. His objectives include honing the program’s learning outcomes and competencies and more fully integrating its activities throughout SIS and AU.
“The future for the program is quite bright,” he says. “It seems to me that young people are particularly concerned with social global issues . . . and the focus specifically on trying to find constructive peaceful ways for dealing with difference seems to be increasing.”
SIS dean Louis Goodman welcomes Fisher as the IPCR’s new director
